Dreams of 18(102)

She’s in love with me.

Jesus Christ.

That’s why she came here. That’s why she took everything I gave. She took it and smiled and kept coming back for more.

And I was letting her.

I was letting her take less than what she deserves. I was letting her settle. I was keeping her here because I couldn’t let go of her.

Because the thought of letting go of her makes me break out in a sweat.

It makes me panic. It twists and screws and digs the knife in my chest.

I was being selfish. So fucking selfish.

So I did the right thing. The thing I should’ve done weeks ago.

I let her go.

I let her go so she could live her life. So she could find someone worthy of her.

Someone who knows how to love. Someone who knows how to protect her and make her smile and laugh.

Someone unlike me.

Someone who doesn’t get terrified at the thought of love. At the thought of making himself so vulnerable to another human being that he can’t think straight.

I leave the kitchen and walk toward her journals, pick one up and open a random page. I sniff it like a junkie and her smell hits me in the gut.

My heart starts banging. Pounding, roaring.

My legs give out and I drop down to the couch.

I take another sniff and again, it hits me like a bullet. It makes me almost groan.

And after that, I can’t stop myself.

I can’t stop myself from flicking pages and reading her handwriting and smelling her. I rub my fingers on it, on the pages. Like they are her skin.

Like by touching them, I can touch her. I can touch her warmth, her softness. I can touch her scent.

I can’t.

She’s gone. She’s not here. I sent her away.

I did the most horrible thing I could do to her so she’d hate me. So she’d finally go back. Go back to where she belongs.

Go back home.

This is my home.

Her words echo around the cabin. They echo and crash against the windows and I hear them clearly.

Not that I haven’t been hearing them.

I’ve been driving aimlessly around all day, because I took today off for her birthday, and I’ve been hearing her voice. I’ve been playing her words on repeat.

But something about coming back to this old cabin – that doesn’t feel like home at all – makes me hear her clearer.

This is her home, she said.

How could it be though when it was never mine? How could she say that?

Her home is Connecticut. Her home is with her parents.

But then, that’s not true, is it?

Her parents have never been her home. Her parents never really cared about her. She was lonely back there.

She was lonely and ignored and alone and… strangely unseen.

Until me.

Until I saw her that night, climbing up on the roof. I saw her and couldn’t stop watching her.

And I watched her be ignored and passed over by narrow-minded, unimaginative people. I watched men and boys salivate after her but staying away because she was unconventional. She was in her own world.

I watched that. I watched all of that and I sent her back to it.

I sent her back to those people who hurt her in the first place. Who took away her safety. Who made her feel unsafe in her own skin. Who made her so afraid that she was ready to drive out of there – drunk – putting herself in jeopardy.

That still terrifies me. It makes my breathing stop. She was so unsafe and so unhappy there that she didn’t think about anything except getting out of there.

Fucking Christ.

You make me feel safe…

I make her feel safe. She told me that and I just ignored it.

I ignored it and I sent her back.

I sent her back to people who judged her from the beginning, from the very beginning for being who she was.

Moon and magic.

Fuck.

Fuck.

But then, what’s the other option? Keeping her here? With me?

I don’t even know how…

But I can learn, can’t I?

I can fucking learn.

I look at her journals with new eyes. These are her dreams. These have been her dreams since she was sixteen and she gave them to me. She didn’t trust me. She thought I’d reject her but still, she gave me her dreams.

Because she’s brave.

If she can be that brave, then I can learn to be brave too.

Can’t I?

If she can love a hard man like me, cynical and old and emotionally stunted, then I can learn to be soft for her. I can learn to protect her better.

Yeah, I can learn.

I can fucking learn.

For her.





They think I’m crazy.

They think I’m in shock.

They think I’ll snap out of it sooner or later when I see that the thing I believe in, the thing that I trust is not going to happen.

They even tell me this.

My mother is the first one to say I’m being crazy and unrealistic. She says I’m being a moon-eyed teenager, a dreamer who’ll get both her heart and her mind broken.

She even tells me about my father.

My real father, the one who I’ve never met before. I never thought she’d tell me his story. She guards that secret like her life depends on it and since the only reason I found out was because she was drunk one night and didn’t know what she was saying, I never expected her to tell me about him.